Page 14 of King's Man

Nate sprinted down St. James’ Street, garnering several disapproving glares as he dodged through the crowd. After making hurried excuses about being late for a meeting with Farris, Nate had abandoned Talmach at Salter’s and bolted after Sam. The startled footman on the door had pointed him in the right direction and he’d set off at a dead run. “Sam, wait!”

Still reeling from shock, he could hardly believe they’d met like this, that fate had landed such an impossible stroke of good fortune in his lap. Perhaps he was dreaming?

But no.

There Sam stood, not twenty feet away in a patch of watery English sunshine, waiting to cross the busy road. Nate’s heart thumped hard, and not only from the run. He slowed to a walk, catching his breath. Cautiously, he called, “Sam?”

Startled, as if lost deep in thought, Sam turned sharply and drew back. His flinty expression licked across Nate’s skin, making his gut clench. “What do you want?”

“I —” Nate’s thoughts scattered in the face of this resistance, shards flying in all directions like sunlight through broken glass. “I had to speak with you. I can’t believe you’re really here.”

Sam drew himself up tall and rigid. Nothing like the warm, open man Nate remembered. Older, certainly. Well, they were both past thirty now and Sam wore the years in the stern lines of his face. Even his eyes were harder, gray as a winter sky. “Where else would I be?” His chin lifted, a defiant flush staining his cheeks. “I’m banished from America.”

He spat it like an accusation, like it was Nate’s fault.

Recoiling, Nate said, “I meant that I can’t believe chance has thrown us together like this. And in London, of all places.”

“Well, I always did have rotten luck.” Sam’s lips curved into a contemptuous smile. “I notice you spared your friend the sight of our fond reunion. Still afraid of being connected to a treacherous Tory?”

“You’re no traitor.”

“Aren’t I? That’s what I'm convicted of.”

His bitterness pinched Nate’s heart. “You know I never thought that for a moment.”

“Doesn’t matter what you thought, does it? It’s what you did that counts. Or what you didn’t do.”

Nate opened his mouth to defend himself, but his throat closed around the words. He felt papery thin in the face of Sam’s anger, insubstantial. “I —” He had to clear his throat before he could speak, and when he did the effort of keeping his voice steady made him sound stonier than he felt. “The war’s over, Sam.”

“Not for me. It won’t ever be over for me.”

Despite his hostility, Nate ached for him. For them both. “But we have peace now. You can —”

“Peace? What kind of peace is it when I can’t even go home?” His gaze darted past Nate and back again. “Looks like your friend is on his way.”

“What?” Nate looked over his shoulder, appalled to see Talmach limping along the street towards them. Hell and buggery, he couldn’t let the colonel know about his friendship with Sam. For any number of reasons.

His panic must have shown in his face because Sam gave a low, derisive laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t betray your dirty secret. Better all-around if we forget what was once between us.”

“I don’t want to forget.”

“And I don’t give a damn what you want.” Sam tugged his hat low over his eyes, tipping his face into shadow. “If it was up to me, we’d never meet again.”

With that, he stepped into the road and disappeared amid the ceaseless London traffic, leaving Nate bereft and bewildered.

“Tanner?” The tap-tap of Talmach’s cane approached from behind him. “No luck hailing a cab?”

Nate closed his eyes, trying to swallow the aching thickness in his throat. “I was about to walk up to Piccadilly,” he said as he turned around.

“Don’t bother. Look, here’s one. We’ll share.” Talmach held out his cane and the driver touched his hat in acknowledgment, slowing the hackney as he edged his way through the flow of traffic to the side pavement where they waited. “I can drop you on Thames Street.”

Mutely, Nate nodded, his thoughts too full of Sam to argue. Christ, but the man he’d met this morning was a dark shadow of the one he remembered. He couldn’t imaginethisSam laughing or tender any more than he could imagine the old Sam living here amid London’s squalor.

Sam, a lockpicker? A thief? Good God, no wonder Nate’s search had proven fruitless; he’d been looking in all the wrong places.

He’d half hoped, and half feared, that Sam had left America. Hoped, because it meant he’d be safe. Feared, because it meant he’d been banished. But either way, he’d imagined Sam comfortable. Practicing law, perhaps. It was a shock to find him so reduced and resentful.

A sharp crack of pain in his ankle startled him. Talmach set his cane back on the ground, frowning. “Where’s your mind today, Tanner?”

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